


the pauses rattle on

by wayonwayout



Series: amateur cartography [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Light Angst, Multi, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-11 19:55:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5639926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wayonwayout/pseuds/wayonwayout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“When I was seventeen,” Rey says, “I was picking parts off old Empire ships and I’d never had an alcoholic drink in my life. I didn't think I’d ever leave those dunes behind.” She downs the rest of her glass in one long go, then wipes at her mouth with her sleeve, unselfconscious.</p><p>“Well, look at us now,” Poe says, tapping at the medal hanging down the center of his chest and then pointing to hers. “Haven’t done so bad for ourselves.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	the pauses rattle on

**Author's Note:**

> warnings: inebriation, discussion of canon major character death. more ship & content tags to be added in later chapters.

 “So there we were, stranded in the ritziest party in Coruscant in our oranges, and Jess grabs a drink from a passing droid and declares that everyone else in the room is _lacking in republican spirit_ –“

There’s a knock at the door and Poe pauses. He lifts his chin from his palm and his elbow from Finn’s bed and straightens, calling, “Yeah?” over his shoulder. His voice stumbles over the loudness and comes out hoarse; he checks the clock and, shit, he’s been here for half an hour already. Time flies, and all.

“Poe!” Kred, from his squad, yells through the door. “The ceremony starts in ten minutes – if you’re not out in thirty seconds you’re gonna be late!”

Poe sighs. “You should see what I’m wearing,” he tells Finn, “I bet you’d get a laugh out of it. Don’t feel quite right out of uniform these days, if I’m being honest.”

More banging at the door. “Poe!”

“Alright, alright,” he yells back. He claps a hand over Finn’s, still and lax on the bedsheet. “I’ll see you later, buddy. Don’t wait up.”

He’s barely swung the door open before Kred is grabbing him by his shirtfront – and, okay, wrinkles, but whatever – and dragging him through the infirmary wing. “Didn’t your parents ever teach you any manners, Kred?” he says, letting himself be tugged along nonetheless. “There’s a lotta delicate equipment in here. Roonie’ll have your head if you – we – break something.”

“Yeah, well, Snap’ll have my head if I let you be late to your own damn ceremony.”

That’s the kicker. He and Rey had argued for the thing to be postponed until Finn had regained consciousness, but protocol had it these ceremonies be held as soon as possible so that everyone can return to work that much faster. That’s the military for you. Plus -- no one said it, but Poe’s parents were soldiers and he’d grown up a base brat, so he knew: after the memorial just a few days before, and with the weight of the dead hanging over them all, the ceremony – and the party after – were as much about morale as they were _honor_.

Kred drags him all the way to the big double doors, then slips away to enter at one of the sides and join the ranks of their fellow soldiers. Rey is there, fussing a little at her clothes; she’s wearing exactly what she arrived in, although he imagines she was offered finer things. It’s all been washed to a pristine white and there’s thin glinting metal at her throat and fingers. Her hair is down. When she turns to face him, there’s a hint of trepidation splashed across her face, there in the straight line of her brows and purse of her lips. He offers her a smile. “You clean up nice,” he says.

“Really?” she blurts, then shakes her head and looks him up and down critically. “You too,” she says.

It’s sorta charming. He’s sorta charmed. “Thanks,” he says; he meets her eyes, a guarded, deep brown, and then the doors are opening and they step into the gaping space of the great hall. It’s open to the skies above, which are blue beyond belief with summer’s long sun cycle. Pilots and soldiers hold formation in lines of white to either side of the central pathway. The General stands at the far end. He tries not to think of the grainy holos he watched over and over as a child: Han Solo and Luke Skywalker, rebel heroes, walking down an aisle just like this one in their very finest, recorded by some droid from afar for posterity. That kind of weight – he doesn’t need it.

He takes a deep breath, and tips his head towards the General: “Can’t leave her waiting, huh?”

Rey shoots him a slice of a smile, then steps forward, hesitance disappearing with every step. He keeps pace, and doesn’t look to her right, where Chewbacca is conspicuously absent, or his left, where Finn is.

After the long walk, the General hangs a shiny piece of metal around each of their necks. There’s another two held by Admiral Statura for their absent comrades. General Organa’s hands only shake a little when she hangs the medal around his neck. Poe looks down and away until they steady, then sends her a small smile, gentle as he knows, and the shadow of a wink. Her eyes widen and her throat works; she doesn’t smile back. Something in Poe goes cold. He drops his head again and doesn’t look up again until she’s beckoning them to turn and face the ranks of their comrades.

Jess and Kred and Snap holler like a pack of hooligans; he gives them an _okay, settle down, assholes_ flap of his hand but it only encourages them. He smiles and lets himself have it. It’s good. He’s good.

After, when the band has rolled in and the booze has been broken out, he circulates, saying hi to everyone he knows -- which is, in fact, pretty much everyone. He downs a glass of something sparkly and lets the crowd carry him. There’s no point in thinking about how the General’s eyes went overbright. Eventually, he ends up in a circle with his squads, and then it’s easy enough to tuck those worries away.

“Trust me,” he’s saying, “trust me, when he wakes up, you’re gonna love this guy--”

There’s a general rumble of laughter and Jess rolls her eyes and says, “We _know_ , you’ve told us like three times --”

\-- and BB-8 bumps into his knees with an urgent whistle. The pilots around him tactfully turn away, drawing the conversation among themselves while he squats down to xe’s level. “Hey, what’s up?” he says, balancing his drink carefully against his knee.

 _Rey,_ BB-8 says, _alone left wall 22 degrees. Maybe sad? Definitely inebriating._

Poe rises, already looking as he says, “Is that really a verb?”

 _Not the point_ , buzzes BB-8.

Since that first, awful night, he’s seen Rey mostly in the in-between moments: in between patrols, in between intel meetings, in between his bustling outside life and the small moments he steals at Finn’s bedside. She’s always quiet and watchful; she has a preternatural steadiness to her that seems to come from inside, radiating outwards. She doesn’t look so different now than she has those other times, but. She _is_ alone. And BB-8 has known her longer than he has. And, most importantly, he owes her something -- a lot of somethings -- and it’s the least he can do to offer his company.

He makes his way across the floor, whirling a lieutenant he vaguely recognizes past him into a twirl by one claw, waving at a kid he sees in mess sometimes. The booze is starting to hit him just right, so he feels good and warm and his various aches have stopped trying to push their way to the forefront of his mind. Rey’s gaze, drifting, catches on him when he’s halfway across the floor, and he gives her a little shimmy, grinning when she laughs quietly.

“Those pants are…” she shakes her head, lost for words.

“Tell me about it,” he says. He sinks into the wall beside her. “It’s a miracle I can walk. Anyone asks me for a dance, you gotta tell them I’m too drunk for it or something. Maybe I’ll drool a little to sell it.”

She looks him up and down like she had earlier, only slower this time, and then she blinks a few times, rapidly, and looks away. “I mean,” she says. “It’s not. It’s not a _bad_ look.”

He laughs. “It’s alright, I know what you mean. A bit more suited for a club on a central planet than -- this. I was telling Finn, you know, he’d get a laugh out of them.”

Rey hums. She stares down at her drink, then takes a healthy swig of it.

The silence holds and stretches, and while Poe’s not naturally a fidgeter, his hands itch for something to do. Eventually, he downs a slightly less healthy swallow of his own glass, and says, “Truth is, I got these pants when I was seventeen and just haven’t had enough opportunities to break them in, wear ‘em down. I thought I’d be pulling up to parties in my X-wing every other weekend. Not quite how it worked out, though, huh?”

Her lips curl up at the corners and she peeks at him from the side. He grins back sheepishly, and hopes she doesn’t notice how his shoulders loosen with relief. He counts her tiny smile as a victory; the fact that he’s only half-telling the truth doesn’t really matter, and anyway, she probably knows. Force-sensitive types always know.

“When I was seventeen,” she says, “I was picking parts off old Empire ships and I’d never had an alcoholic drink in my life. I didn't think I’d ever leave those dunes behind.” She downs the rest of her glass in one long go, then wipes at her mouth with her sleeve, unselfconscious.

“Well, look at us now,” Poe says, tapping at the medal hanging down the center of his chest and then pointing to hers. “Haven’t done so bad for ourselves.”

She laughs abruptly. “No,” she says, “no, I suppose we haven’t.”

A droid appears at their sides with a platter of drinks, and she takes one and hands another to him. He contemplates it for a moment, then throws back what’s left of his last drink and puts the empty glass onto the tray. “Thanks, friend,” he says, and the droid beeps back at him, _Don’t forget to hydrate!_

“I like that,” she says, “all the droids here -- so polite. The people, too. ‘S nice.”

She takes a big drink of her new drink, and Poe suddenly wonders whether maybe she just doesn’t know you shouldn’t drink alcohol like that unless you want to get _really_ , really drunk. He can’t come up with a way to ask without being condescending, though. He’s maybe had a bit more than he was planning to.

“They are that,” he says instead. “Here, you want me to introduce you to my friends? They’re nice, I promise. Or we can hang out, that’s cool too. Or I can -- if you want your wall back, I can do that too. I’m easy,” he says, and then only barely refrains from covering his face with his hand. _Really_ , Dameron?

“I’d like to meet your friends,” she says, and he thinks, _thank God, maybe people don’t say that in the cesspit of Jakku_ , but there’s a glint to her eyes that looks like maybe she’s laughing at him, so. Probably no luck there.

It’s been a long week and he’s had a few drinks. Frankly, he could be doing a lot worse. He _has_ done a lot worse, before. Maybe. Once or twice.  

He waves a beckoning hand at Jess and Snap and the others. BB-8 gets there first, and Rey gives a delighted laugh, higher and freer than anything he’s heard from her.

“Hi, BB-8,” she says, settling down on her heels. “I wish I could offer you some of this drink, it’s very good.”

BB-8’s lights whirl. _Good drink makes people silly_ . _Silly people make silly mistakes._

“You’re very right,” she says, pursing her lips. “It’s a serious risk. I’m glad you’re here to watch our backs.”

She’s kind of wonderful. Poe can see why Finn adores her.

He introduces her to bright, whip-sharp Jess and steady, clever Snap; she’s hesitant at first, but she warms, cautiously. They’re wonderful, too. Obviously. No better people, and he’s grateful every day for the squadron he has. What’s left of them.

And that’s grim, grimmer than he wants to be, so he downs the rest of his drink and pushes it away. Across the small circle, Rey watches him for a moment, then drains hers as well.

Poe lets himself sit back and enjoy the conversation flowing around him, only jumping in here and there to guide it around possible sore spots. He’s got the advantage here of knowing everyone involved, or at least knowing them the _most_. But he likes to watch them, shining and alive under the heady lights of the grand hall. It settles something in him that’s running at breakneck speed the rest of the time. That’s the point of these things, he supposes.

Rey, he notices, listens more than she talks, and drinks, and watches him right back. She’s not shy about it, either, although he couldn’t say whether that’s the alcohol or not. At one point, the band starts playing an old Rebel song that was written at the base that was on Jess’ homeworld, and she yells, “It’s the song of my people!” and everyone starts singing along, and Rey’s gaze drifts between them all. It’s almost the same sort of assessing look she gave to his outfit earlier, but -- not quite. He can’t put his finger on what’s different, but it’s something about the wideness of her eyes.

Poe knows the chorus and some of the verses; they tend to vary from world to world with the more popular anthems. He sings along under his breath, tipping his head back to rest against the wall. There’s a gentle vibration under his skull a moment later as Rey settles beside him. She lists slightly and her shoulder brushes his.

“I’m tired,” she says, sounding vaguely surprised.

“That’s the alcohol,” he says, then pauses and adds, frowning, “and probably some post-battle fatigue. The alcohol helps, though.”

She nods sagely. Then she lolls her head over to look at him. Quieter, she says, “I’m not sure I remember the way to the room they gave me.”

“That would be the alcohol too,” he says. He figures she’s not the kind of person with a bad sense of direction. That can’t happen to Jedis, he’s almost certain. “Jess can you get there, would that be okay? The number’ll be in the system, and she’s been navigating this maze for a long time. And -- water. You should have some water.”

“Sure,” she says. She yawns, head dipping further to the side. BB-8 hums sympathetically. Poe stumbles upright and goes to find some water.

Jess is well on her way to drunk, but a quick check at the control panel by the door shows that Rey’s room is just near hers. When they leave, they’re talking in quiet tones; they’re weaving slightly, but not holding each other up or anything, so they can probably handle it. Poe closes his eyes for a long moment, then heaves himself up off the wall to standing. He gives his squadron a nod and whistles for BB-8.

He’s been wandering military bases late at night since he figured out how to hack the keycode for his parents’ lodgings, although he didn’t make it as far, back then. He knows his way around, is what he’s saying. There’s no excuse for the way his feet lead him back to the infirmary. But that’s where he finds himself; the doors open with a low sigh of electronics and the hiss of air escaping and he passes through into the quiet of the ward.

The main, open area is nearly clear. Patients with injuries severe enough to need an overnight stay are typically moved into the further reaches of the infirmary where the little noises of the night don’t build up so much. He moves through it quickly, then takes the twisting, turning hallways through the group and private rooms with more careful steps. The path to Finn’s room is well-worn by this point. He presses the button for the door; he wouldn’t be surprised if his fingerprints have crowded out all the others that have passed this way.

The door swings inwards. Something loosens around his chest, his throat, as the soft dark is revealed. He sighs, quieted.

“Poe?”

He spins and his heel catches on the hard metal frame of the door. “Ffffuck,” he breathes. Roonie catches him by one shoulder before he can stumble and do more damage to himself. She eyes him -- not, he thinks, unkindly.

“You’re drunk.”

“Was at the party,” he explains. Something occurs to him, and he frowns: “No party for you, Roons?”

“Someone’s got to hold down the fort,” she says.

He laughs, thinking back to years and years of sprains and twists and broken bones. “Always seems to be you, doesn’t it? I’ve started to wonder if you’re volunteering for it.”

He sways a little bit. She frowns and brushes her palm across his forehead, smoothing his hair aside. “Go to bed, Poe,” she says. “Your boy will hold until tomorrow.”

“He’s his own person, Roonie, he’s not _mine_ ,” Poe says, but he’s shaking his head -- “Just a minute? I’ll be quick.”

There’s a sticky feeling at the back of his throat. The dryness is probably the booze; the weird sense of urgency that’s got his pulse fluttering shallowly at the hollow where his neck meets his jaw is something else entirely. He’s not sure what it is. He just knows he has to see Finn.

She sighs but inclines her head towards the room. He mouths _thank you_ at her and slips out from her hold.

Finn is just as he left him. No surprise there, obviously, but. It’s still hard to see him like this. Harder for him to _be_ like this, probably, Poe thinks. Hard to see all the same. He presses a hand over Finn’s on the bedspread.

“Goodnight, Finn,” he says.

Roonie walks him out of the infirmary, hand wrapped around his elbow just like when he was nine, eleven, fourteen. He finds his way back to his bed, and collapses into it, and sleeps, and -- for once -- doesn’t dream.

  


The mess in the morning is full of groggy eyes and sleepy smiles. There’s a sense of lightness that’s been missing since the assault on the Starkiller base, which, basically, means the ceremony and party were a success. Poe rubs at his eyes and eats his breakfast -- leftovers from last night’s stew, since the cooks were hungover today too -- without really tasting it. Rey arrives a few minutes after he does, but eats like there’s a famine and pats the table twice before standing.

“Repairs won’t happen if no one’s doing them,” she says. She swings her arms by her side just slightly; her fingers graze the fabric of Poe’s shirt over his shoulder. “Chewie’s a good pilot, but I don’t trust him alone with all those wires. Not sure he has fingers to speak of.”

Poe frowns up at her. “How’s he pull the trigger then? I’ve seen him use a blaster.”

“I haven’t _asked_ ,” she says, making a face that implies she doesn’t want to know the answer. He laughs, and she smiles, and then she turns to the rest of the group and the smile turns shy. “Nice, ah, seeing you all again.”

She vanishes on quiet feet after the others offer waves and goodbyes. Poe watches her go, chewing distractedly.

“She’s nice,” Jess says.

Coil, who’s been with him longer than Kred but less than Snap or Jess, smirks and says, “Your judgement in these things isn’t always on the mark, Pava.”

Jess goes red. “If you’re talking about that time on Xix --”

“Best shot I know in a cockpit but put you in a bar with a beautiful being and --”

“Second best shot,” Poe interrupts.

“You know what, Dameron?”

The table erupts with laughter. Poe ’s cheeks, his sides, hurt with it.

He gets a call when he’s halfway through his meal ordering him to the command room. He thumps Kred on the shoulder as he rises and he takes his tray to the cleaners. He’s working on autopilot as he takes a side door through the kitchens, out onto the hangar, and across to the strategy rooms and command central. He pauses before the great double doors before entering, breathes and stares at the panelling and tries to gather his scattered thoughts. Hangovers, he thinks dimly, are a fucking nightmare.

His gaze drifts and lands on the memorial wall. Photos and holos jumble together, stuck up with bits of tacky or magnets. Sometimes people join up who don’t have any family, don’t have a past they want to remember or carry with them; with no photos, those left behind have written their names on torn fragments of paper and stuck them up with care. Poe recognizes most, but not all, of the people affixed. A picture of a younger Han Solo has been recently added in the upper left; he’s grinning at someone off the side of the frame, and doesn’t seem to know the photo is being taken at all.

Poe looks away. He presses his identification number into the keypad with numb fingers and enters. He doesn’t look back.

“Commander, thank you for joining us so promptly,” General Organa says. She’s standing by the map table, back straight as steel. Everything in this base is metal and she is harder than all of it. She quirks a grin. “Especially given the festivities of last night.”

“You know I’ve dragged myself out of much worse for you, ma’am,” Poe says with a grin of his own. Her smile widens marginally. She _does_ know.

“We’ve got a mission for you,” she says. “Half your squad, shipping out immediately. You can choose who to bring with you.”

The coldness at his fingers spreads upwards in a rapid advance. He refuses to pay it attention; he folds his hands behind his back, nods, and says, “Not a problem. Where are we headed?”

General Organa gestures at the pockets of cluttered space in the general vicinity of the unknown region they’d just recently recovered. “We’re pushing the timeline on Rey’s departure. We need Luke back _now_ \-- but that’s a decision that may have repercussions. We need to have ports of haven scouted in advance in case something goes wrong on their return, and we don’t know these regions well enough.”

Poe nods again. “Go in, scout it out, report back.” He steps closer to inspect the map. “Shouldn’t take more than a week, wouldn’t you say?”

“That’s what we’re thinking,” says General Organa.

“Right,” he says. “I’ll go notify my people. Ma’am.”

“We’ll give the specifications to BB-8,” she says. “May the force be with you, Poe.”

The day will never come when that fails to give him shivers. He echoes it back, and the shivers follow him out, past the memorial and back to his squad. They snap to attention when he appears, their meals forgotten. He shoves his nerves away and gives them the orders they need.

His bag is always packed and ready to go beside the door. He swings it onto his back; he presses his fingers to his lips and then to the small idol on the shelf over his desk, then leaves, and it’s almost like he was never back at all.

Once again, he has no excuse for the way his feet lead him back to the infirmary, not the hangar. His squad won’t be out for two hours at least, he tells himself, so there’s no harm in it. Roonie’s nowhere to be seen. If she were, she’d probably send him back to nap. There’s little time to sleep on a mission, but Poe’s been running these races since he was just a kid. His body’s used to it by now.

Inside Finn’s room, he stands beside the bed and hovers his hand over Finn’s before resting it on the bed just beside. He closes his eyes. It’s too much like Finn’s not there, though, like they’re _both_ not there, or both there and both lost to the world -- and that would be worse. He opens them again.

“I’ll be back in a week, buddy,” he says. “Maybe when I’m back you’ll be awake and we can have a conversation, not just me blathering away at you. Hell, maybe without me here droning on, you’ll have a reason to wake up.”

There’s no reply, obviously.

He looks at Finn’s face and it feels kind of like the first time all over again. He hasn’t wanted to, this past week -- it’s so still, _too_ still for someone as animated as Finn is. Poe doesn’t know what to do with the knot his stomach twists itself into at those rested eyelids, the slack mouth, the complete quiescence of it. He only has a little under two hours now to look, so he lets himself.

“It’s the strangest thing,” he says, barely more than breath. He stares somewhere in the vicinity of Finn’s eyelashes. “This,” he says; pauses. “It.”

He’s not sure what he’s trying to say. His head is scrambled, and that’s so fucking dangerous.

“One week,” he says finally. “Don’t run off to any heroics while I’m gone or anything. We lost each other once already, huh? Let’s not make a habit of that.”

There doesn’t seem to be anything else to say. He slings his bag back onto his shoulder and leaves.

BB-8 finds him in the hangar, sitting on the ground, leaning back against his ‘Wing’s stand, and the little droid settles beside him, a familiar weight. _Plans acquired,_ xe whistles, _discuss now?_

“Yeah,” he says. “Let’s nail it down. We don’t need any weak spots biting us in the ass out there in the black.”

When his squad arrives, they’re ready. He gives them their first coordinates and clambers up his ladder, snapping his helmet on. It’s only in the last moments as they peel away from the ground that he sees the small figure standing beside the Falcon, one hand braced against its landing pillars, watching them. He thinks maybe he sees Rey wave.

  


 

**Author's Note:**

> many many thanks to tumblr user snowflurriedsky for betaing this baby!!! quickly: i'm not an expert on star wars canon; i'm working off the pdf of the script and my own (admittedly faulty) memory of the original trilogy, but I haven't watched the prequels in years, I never got into the EU, and I haven't gotten my hands on any of the tfa-related novels, so I'll likely be making some stuff up as I go here. also, I realize that ages are floating around the internet for rey/finn/poe. for the purposes of this series, poe is nebulously 30-ish, finn is nebulously 24-ish, and rey is 20 at the absolute youngest. thank you for reading! i hope to get the next chapter up in the next week :)
> 
> title, once again, from the weakerthans


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